Share Now
on March 27, 2023
Read Time: 7 Minutes
Launched in late 2020 as a replacement for the Tier 2 (General) visa, the Skilled Worker visa has already proved to be a key immigration route enabling talented people from around the world to come to the UK. Specifically, this visa route allows eligible applicants to come to, work and live in the UK if they have a confirmed job offer from an approved employer.
One of the most important things to know about the Skilled Worker visa category from a would-be migrant’s point of view, is that their application for this visa will only be successful if they will be doing a job that is on the Home Office’s list of eligible occupations. The applicant will also need to be paid a certain minimum salary, although the exact required pay level will depend on the specific job.
If you are successful in being approved for a Skilled Worker visa, you will be able to come to the UK and work in the eligible job for the approved employer referenced in your visa application.
You can stay in the UK on this visa for up to five years – at which point, you will need to extend it if you wish to continue living and working in the country. You can apply to extend your Skilled Worker visa as many times as you wish, provided that you still meet the Home Office’s eligibility requirements.
As a holder of the Skilled Worker visa, you will be permitted to do the following:
Although there are various eligibility requirements that you will need to fulfil in order to make a successful application for the Skilled Worker visa – including having a good level of English language capability, and working for a Home Office-approved UK employer – much of the focus of your application will inevitably be on whether your job is eligible for this visa.
In order to ascertain whether your job will be eligible for the Skilled Worker visa, you will need to know the relevant four-digit occupation code. If you don’t know the code for your job, you can look it up using the Office for National Statistics (ONS)’s Occupation Coding Tool.
Once you know the occupation code for your job, you will be able to check the Home Office’s own list of eligible occupations and codes for the Skilled Worker visa route. This will allow you to determine whether you can, indeed, apply for a Skilled Worker visa in order to do this job.
There is an exceedingly wide range of jobs that can be done in the UK by holders of the Skilled Worker visa. At the time of this article being written, the Home Office’s latest list of eligible occupations included the likes of chief executives and senior officials, financial managers and directors, senior police officers, and many more.
However, below, we have spotlighted some of the categories of worker that are particularly popular when it comes to the Skilled Worker visa.
Care workers and home carers have been recognised on the shortage occupation list for the Skilled Worker visa since 15th February 2022. This means that such workers are eligible to apply for a work visa for the UK.
The news of such workers’ addition to the shortage occupation list was confirmed in a Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC 1019), which itself followed confirmation by the Government that it would be accepting recommendations set out by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC).
The relevant occupation codes on the shortage occupation list are 6145, referring to care workers and home carers, and 6146, which refers to senior care workers. In the case of workers under the 6145 code, there is no going rate, and the salary must be a minimum of £20,480 per year, or £10.10 an hour – whichever is higher. For senior care workers under the 6146 code, the salary must be 80% of the going rate, at £13,520 per year (£6.67 per hour).
It should also be noted that private households and individuals are not permitted to sponsor under this route, unless they are a sole trader sponsoring the individual to work for their business.
With the UK tech sector having reached a combined market value of $1 trillion during 2022, and the Government having pledged its commitment to strengthening the country’s position as a “global science and tech superpower”, it should be no great surprise that information technology (IT) roles are well-represented on the eligible occupations and shortage occupations lists for this visa.
Relevant occupations on the shortage occupations list at the time of this article being written included IT business analysts, architects and system designers (occupation code 2135); programmers and software development professionals (2136); web design and development professionals (2137); and cyber security specialists (2139).
For Skilled Worker visa holders under any of those aforementioned occupation codes, 80% of the going rate must be paid. The required salary is £29,280 per year or £14.44 per hour for the 2135 occupation code, £26,640 per year or £13.14 per hour for the 2136 code, £20,800 per year or £10.26 per hour under the 2137 code, and £25,440 per year or £12.54 per hour under the 2139 code.
The hospitality sector in the UK has long suffered from staffing shortages, which have been attributed to factors including Brexit and COVID-19 disruption.
There is evidence of that situation having slightly improved recently – data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) indicate that the accommodation and food service activities sector had around 149,000 vacancies in the period from October to December 2022. This equated to a 5.5% drop in vacancies from the previous quarter.
Nonetheless, the UK hospitality industry continues to be greatly dependent on talented staff from overseas. The Skilled Worker visa represents a potential route through which employers in this sector can secure such workers’ services, as a number of hospitality-related occupations are included in the Home Office’s list of eligible occupations.
Those occupations include the likes of hotel and accommodation managers and proprietors (under occupation code 1221); restaurant and catering establishment managers and proprietors (1223); publicans and managers of licensed premises (1224); leisure and sports managers (1225); bakers and flour confectioners (5432); chefs (5434); and catering and bar managers (5436). If you are an employer seeking to sponsor someone to come and work in the UK on a Skilled Worker visa, it is crucial to ensure you use the right occupation code for the given job. If you use the wrong code on the certificate of sponsorship (CoS), the Home Office will not approve the Skilled Worker visa application. This will cause an unwanted delay and add to the cost of recruiting someone via this route.
The UK Home Office maintains a list of “shortage occupations”; applicants and organisations interested in this visa route can consult the up-to-date list on the GOV.UK website.
If a given job appears on the shortage occupations list, the successful applicant for a Skilled Worker visa can be paid 80% of the job’s usual going rate.
Examples of jobs there were on the shortage occupations list at the time of this article being written included:
It should be noted that this list is liable to change over time, so you should always check the Home Office’s up-to-date list before making any decisions in relation to the Skilled Worker visa route.
Even in the relatively short space of time since it was launched, the Skilled Worker visa has become a backbone of the UK Government’s efforts to attract some of the most talented and capable workers from around the world to the UK.
Here at Cranbrook Legal, we have an excellent track record of project-managing applications for the Skilled Worker visa to ensure a successful result. We are similarly renowned when it comes to assisting, advising, and guiding employers wishing to act as sponsors for workers on this visa. For more information on your options as an employer/sponsor or as someone looking to live and work in the UK on this visa, please call our specialists in UK immigration law today on 0208 215 0053, or send us an email to arrange a free consultation.
How Can We Help You?
